Tuesday, January 30, 2018

TRUMP PLAN: Big Amnesty Now, Nothing for Americans Until 2027

President Donald Trump’s new “framework” amnesty plan would provide citizenship to at least 1.8 million illegals — but would not allow any beneficial reduction in cheap-labor immigration until 2027.

The pro-business plan, leaked to Washington insiders this afternoon, asks progressive Democrats and business-first Republicans to accept a trade-off: Amnesty for at least 1.8 million illegals in exchange for a border wall, end chain-migration and ending the visa lottery.

But the loopholes are huge — and those loopholes will flood the labor market for another decade, so helping Wall Street by cooling the current worker shortage which is now raising Americans’ wages.

For example, the lottery program would be ended, but the 50,000 lottery visas per year would be given to other migrants, so doing nothing to reduce the wage-lowering inflow of cheap labor.

More importantly, chain-migration would formally end immediately, but everyone on the huge waiting list would be allowed into the United States. That pipeline of pending chain-migration immigrants includes roughly 4 million people — many of whom will depend on taxpayer funds because they are either unskilled or too old to work. That population is enough to keep the chain-migration pipeline open for another ten years, which means the public only gains a benefit if the alliance of business groups and progressives somehow fails to expand other areas of the immigration system during the next ten years.

“Everybody gets in,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “It will be eight to 10 years before there’s any reduction in immigration numbers.”

A one-year grace period for chain-migration people is understandable, he said. “But for everybody on the waiting list to be able to come? That is absurd.”